“Howdy!” I called to him, real cowboy-like.
When he turned toward me, I saw he was handsome in a catalog model kind of way, blue eyes that were so blue they were kind of startling, with sandy hair peeking from under his hat. “Is this the Square C Ranch?” he asked.
My response was typical Fillmore County spare. “Yep.”
An expression of relief crossed his face. “I’ve been driving up and down this road all morning looking for you,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “you’re here.”
That’s when I saw Jeanette, still in her barn coat, coming out of the house. A glance at her face and the way she was walking told me she was not happy. She opened the yard gate and the young man doffed his hat to her, revealing a pony tail tied with a red rubber band. Jeanette stepped up to him and got right to the point. “The answer is no,” she said. Before our visitor could reply, she added, “You want to pick up fossils on my ranch and I don’t have time to mess with you.”
Now, how she knew why that fellow was there, I don’t know. Maybe it was instinctive. Anyway, he dug into one of his shirt pockets and produced a folded paper, unfolded it, and handed it to Jeanette. “You’re Mrs. Coulter, right? I’ve been trying to call you for a week but the phone just rang and rang.”
I could have told him the reason for that. We didn’t have an answering machine and most of the time during daylight hours everybody was outside working. In the evening, Jeanette sometimes simply chose not to answer the phone. It was just her way.
She reluctantly took the paper, looked it over, and said, “I remember this. Ray’s homework from about six months ago. How’d you get it?” When I eased in closer to hear everything, Jeanette gave me a warning look, then filled me in. “For English class, Ray wrote a paper about some fossils his father found.”
“He included some photographs, too,” our visitor said.
Jeanette provided him with the Fillmore County stare, a look that would freeze a man on fire. “I know my son. He wouldn’t send this to anyone without my permission. I’ll ask you again. How did you get it?”
“Someone e-mailed it to me, an address I didn’t recognize. I e-mailed back but got no answer. When I called you and couldn’t get through, I decided to come visit. Mrs. Coulter, I’m Dr. Norman Pickford. I’m a paleontologist. The bones described in your son’s paper may be very important. That’s why I came all the way from Argentina to see them.”
Jeanette absorbed this information. “What were you doing in Argentina?”
“Hunting for dinosaurs. It’s what I do.”
In an attempt to lighten things up a bit, I stuck out my paw. “Mike Wire,” I said. “I’m the hired hand.”
His grip was satisfactorily manly, even by Fillmore County standards. “Nice to meet you, Mike. I’m called Pick.”
“Pick,” I said, testing the name. “Sounds like a good name for a man who digs up fossils.”
He smiled tolerantly. “I don’t dig. I like to say that’s why God makes grad students. I just hunt and find. I’m very good at finding.” He shifted back to Jeanette. “Mrs. Coulter, those fossils your son wrote about might be important to science. If I could just look at them, I won’t take more than ten minutes of your time, I promise.”
There was something about Pick that made me want to help him. I was also curious about those fossils. “What could it hurt?” I asked Jeanette.
Jeanette shot me a look, but I could tell she was wavering. I guess she was curious herself. She said, “All right, come on inside. I’ll let you have a gander. And you can come along, too, Mike. That way I won’t have to explain everything to you later.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick said but it was to Jeanette’s back. She was already walking across the yard, her arms crossed, her head down, and I could tell she just wanted to get this over with.
We went inside the house, which was its usual mess. I was a little embarrassed for Jeanette when Pick walked in and looked around her dilapidated living room, furnished with an old sofa, a couple of overstuffed chairs with the stuffing peeking out of them in a couple of places, two mismatched end tables, and an old brass lamp with a tattered, dirty lampshade.
Jeanette led us into the kitchen and pointed at the coffee pot and then the kitchen table, which I guess would have been in fashion when Eisenhower was President. The chairs around the table didn’t match. Likely, old Bill had picked them up alongside the road where they’d been pitched. “Mike, pour the man some coffee,” Jeanette said. To the paleontologist, she said, “Have a seat. I’ll get the fossils.”